Tri CLE Rock Roll Run (1st place AG)

 Tri CLE Rock Roll Run is a local race in NE Ohio. The race always takes place the weekend before school starts. Usually, the race is on Saturday and the first day of the semester is the following Monday. 

Since it was a local race, I couldn't not do it. After discussing with my coach, he said I could do a sprint tri at this race because he did not want me to do anything too long that would take more time to recover from the race than actually get long training in. 

I signed up for the sprint tri again this year. Since the race was two days before the semester begins, it's the last thing on my mind leading up to the race day. The weekend before the race weekend, I went out and did another long, hilly road ride, which left me feeling toasted for the next couple of days (but it was a good training ride tho). Then, I had to scramble to get my classes ready for the new semester. On Friday (the day before the race), I had research meetings in the morning and then attended a college event in the afternoon before driving from Akron to Cleveland to pick up the race packet and drop off my bike at T1 (T1 and T2 were in different locations). 

Friday night I had a quite terrible sleep because of work stress and anxiety :( I woke up tired and my legs still felt tired for some reason. My body told me that I was not ready to race. So, I reminded myself that I was going to use this race to practice nutrition for the last time before the Ironman and my goal again was to have fun. 

I arrived at T2/finish line area (Edgewater park) around 5:15am to set up T2 and board the shuttle to T1. They said that there were almost 1,000 people at this race this year (400 more than last year). The race committee did a pretty successful job advertising the race. After arriving at T1, I set up the T1 area and used the restroom. My coral did not start until almost 8am and I had plenty of time. 

The Olympic distance started first at 6:30am then it was a time trial start where they let 2-3 athletes in the water at a time to avoid accidents and congestion. I did not get in the water until almost 8am, which was quite a long time to wait at the start line. After they let me in, I forgot to press the start on my watch (ugh) until I almost got to the first buoy (about 50 yards in). For some reason, I could not get into the rhythm during the swim. I also lost sight of the buoy and went off course for a bit. Ugh. It was a struggle. I remember at one point during the swim while I was trying to pass a person who was doing breaststrokes, I asked myself what I was doing there. The swim course was actually nice and I liked it because there were a lot of turns to keep it interesting. It's just me whose head was not there. I passed a lot of people in the swim (because I started almost last). After exiting the swim, I pressed the WRONG button on my watch so instead of switching it to T1 timing, I paused the watch instead (another ugh). 

I did not realize that I paused the watch until I exited T1. 

T1 was also a struggle. I was tired and forgot what I needed to do. Made simple rookie errors like putting socks on before taking off the wetsuit, etc. For some reason, I still could not get my shit together. I continued to struggle during the first mile on the bike. Then, I took a deep breath and drank the nutrition to gain energy and reset my mind. I began to feel "right" after 3 miles into the bike and that's when I started to pick up the pace and pass people. The bike course was a lot of long climbs and thanks to my hilly training rides, I thought I did pretty well. I did not have any issues during T2. 

I knew that the run was going to be slow because at that point I still felt like I left my legs at home and there was no way I was going to run up the long hills. It was also hot by the time I started the run so I walked (fast) up the hills and ran down (and try to keep a consistent pace) like what I always do in ultra running. Well, it turned out that the run was not ugly as I averaged 10:30min/mile over the 5K distance (this is considered not ugly for a slow runner like me LOL). 

After I crossed the finish line, I knew I did not perform as well as I should have. I wanted to know how I did but there was a timing error that messed up the results. The race said that they would fix it by Sunday evening. 

And for some ridiculous reason + luck, the result showed that I got first in my age group O_o Totally did not expect that at all. 

This was the last race before my A race this year. The race was very well organized and fun. I heard that some people were confused with the bike and run courses and some people cut the course. If you live in Cleveland/NE Ohio area, I highly recommend this race :)

Sydney